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 CHAPTER 2

Section 2.1

1.
a. S = {1324, 1342, 1423, 1432, 2314, 2341, 2413, 2431, 3124, 3142, 4123, 4132, 3214, 3241, 4213,
4231}.

b. Event A contains the outcomes where 1 is first in the list:

A = {1324, 1342, 1423, 1432}.

c. Event B contains the outcomes where 2 is first or second:

B = {2314, 2341, 2413, 2431, 3214, 3241, 4213, 4231}.

d. The event AB contains the outcomes in A or B or both:

AB = {1324, 1342, 1423, 1432, 2314, 2341, 2413, 2431, 3214, 3241, 4213, 4231}.
AB = , since 1 and 2 can’t both get into the championship game.
A = S – A = {2314, 2341, 2413, 2431, 3124, 3142, 4123, 4132, 3214, 3241, 4213, 4231}.

2.
a. A = {RRR, LLL, SSS}.

b. B = {RLS, RSL, LRS, LSR, SRL, SLR}.

c. C = {RRL, RRS, RLR, RSR, LRR, SRR}.

d. D = {RRL, RRS, RLR, RSR, LRR, SRR, LLR, LLS, LRL, LSL, RLL, SLL, SSR, SSL, SRS, SLS, RSS, LSS}

e. Event D contains outcomes where either all cars go the same direction or they all go different
directions:
D = {RRR, LLL, SSS, RLS, RSL, LRS, LSR, SRL, SLR}.
Because event D totally encloses event C (see the lists above), the compound event CD is just event
D:
CD = D = {RRL, RRS, RLR, RSR, LRR, SRR, LLR, LLS, LRL, LSL, RLL, SLL, SSR, SSL, SRS, SLS,
RSS, LSS}.
Using similar reasoning, we see that the compound event CD is just event C:
CD = C = {RRL, RRS, RLR, RSR, LRR, SRR}.

48
 Chapter 2: Probability

3.
a. A = {SSF, SFS, FSS}.

b. B = {SSS, SSF, SFS, FSS}.

c. For event C to occur, the system must have component 1 working (S in the first position), then at least
one of the other two components must work (at least one S in the second and third positions): C =
{SSS, SSF, SFS}.

d. C = {SFF, FSS, FSF, FFS, FFF}.

AC = {SSS, SSF, SFS, FSS}.
AC = {SSF, SFS}.
BC = {SSS, SSF, SFS, FSS}. Notice that B contains C, so BC = B.
BC = {SSS SSF, SFS}. Since B contains C, BC = C.

4.
4
a. The 2 = 16 possible outcomes have been numbered here for later reference.

Home Mortgage Number

Outcome 1 2 3 4
1 F F F F
2 F F F V
3 F F V F
4 F F V V
5 F V F F
6 F V F V
7 F V V F
8 F V V V
9 V F F F
10 V F F V
11 V F V F
12 V F V V
13 V V F F
14 V V F V
15 V V V F
16 V V V V

b. Outcome numbers 2, 3, 5, 9 above.

c. Outcome numbers 1, 16 above.

d. Outcome numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 9 above.

e. In words, the union of (c) and (d) is the event that either all of the mortgages are variable, or that at
most one of them is variable-rate: outcomes 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 16. The intersection of (c) and (d) is the event
that all of the mortgages are fixed-rate: outcome 1.

f. The union of (b) and (c) is the event that either exactly three are fixed, or that all four are the same:
outcomes 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 16. The intersection of (b) and (c) is the event that exactly three are fixed and
all four are the same type. This cannot happen (the events have no outcomes in common), so the
intersection of (b) and (c) is .
49
 Chapter 2: Probability

5.
a. The 33 = 27 possible outcomes are numbered below for later reference.

Outcome Outcome
Number Outcome Number Outcome
1 111 15 223
2 112 16 231
3 113 17 232
4 121 18 233
5 122 19 311
6 123 20 312
7 131 21 313
8 132 22 321
9 133 23 322
10 211 24 323
11 212 25 331
12 213 26 332
13 221 27 333
14 222

b. Outcome numbers 1, 14, 27 above.

c. Outcome numbers 6, 8, 12, 16, 20, 22 above.

d. Outcome numbers 1, 3, 7, 9, 19, 21, 25, 27 above.

6.
a. S = {123, 124, 125, 213, 214, 215, 13, 14, 15, 23, 24, 25, 3, 4, 5}.

b. A = {3, 4, 5}.

c. B = {125, 215, 15, 25, 5}.

d. C = {23, 24, 25, 3, 4, 5}.

7.
a. S = {BBBAAAA, BBABAAA, BBAABAA, BBAAABA, BBAAAAB, BABBAAA, BABABAA, BABAABA,
BABAAAB, BAABBAA, BAABABA, BAABAAB, BAAABBA, BAAABAB, BAAAABB, ABBBAAA,
ABBABAA, ABBAABA, ABBAAAB, ABABBAA, ABABABA, ABABAAB, ABAABBA, ABAABAB,
ABAAABB, AABBBAA, AABBABA, AABBAAB, AABABBA, AABABAB, AABAABB, AAABBBA,
AAABBAB, AAABABB, AAAABBB}.

b. AAAABBB, AAABABB, AAABBAB, AABAABB, AABABAB.

50
 Chapter 2: Probability

8.

a. A1  A2  A3

b. A1  A2  A3

c. A1  A2  A3

d. ( A1  A2  A3)  ( A1  A2  A3)  ( A1  A2  A3 )

e. A1  (A2  A3)

51
Another document from Scribd.com that is
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 [455] Necrol. S. Pet. de Culturâ (Le Mans), quoted in Rer. Gall. Scriptt.,
vol. xi. p. 632. Ademar of Chabanais (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 161)
seems to imply that he had contracted a mortal disease in his Angevin
dungeon.

[456] Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 31 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., pp. 305, 306).
From the dates there given, Avesgaud must have died in October 1035, about
five months before Herbert Wake-dog.

[457] Acta Pontif. Cenoman., as above (p. 305).

As soon as the grant was made, Gervase “took counsel with the people
of the diocese and the brave men of the land,”[458] and headed a
revolution by which Herbert Bacco was expelled and the boy Hugh set in
his place. The bishop’s next step was to seek a wife for his godson.
Twelve years before, a band of Bretons, called by Hugh’s father to aid
him against Bishop Avesgaud and Fulk of Anjou, had made a raid upon
Blois and carried off Count Odo’s daughter Bertha to become the wife of
Duke Alan of Britanny.[459] It was this Bertha, now a widow and a
fugitive from Rennes, whence she was driven by her brother-in-law after
her husband’s death,[460] whom Gervase now wedded to Hugh. Such a
choice was not likely to conciliate Geoffrey Martel; all the less if—as
some words of a local historian seem to imply—the daughter of Odo of
Blois was gifted with all the courage and energy that were lacking in her
brothers.[461] By some of the usual Angevin arts Geoffrey entrapped
Gervase into his power and cast him into prison,[462] where for the next
seven years the luckless bishop was left to reflect upon the consequences
of his short-sighted policy and to perceive that in striving to secure a
protector against Herbert Bacco he had placed himself and his country at
the mercy of an unscrupulous tyrant. During those years Maine,
nominally ruled by the young Count Hugh, was really in the power of
Geoffrey Martel, and it became the scene of a fierce warfare between
Anjou and Normandy. In 1049 the Council of Reims threatened Geoffrey
with excommunication unless he released the captive prelate,[463] and
next year the excommunication was actually pronounced by the Pope;
[464] but neither Council nor Pope could turn the Angevin from his prey.

About 1051 Hugh died, and his death sealed the fate of Le Mans. Its
count’s son was an infant, its bishop a captive in an Angevin dungeon; its
citizens had no choice but to submit. The twice-widowed countess and
her children were driven out at one gate as the Hammer of Anjou
knocked at the other, and without striking a blow Geoffrey became
acknowledged master of Maine from thenceforth till the day of his death.
[465] Gervase, his spirit broken at last, purchased his release by the
surrender of Château-du-Loir, and by a solemn oath never again to set
foot in Le Mans so long as Geoffrey lived. He found a refuge at the court
of Duke William of Normandy, till in 1057 he was raised to the
metropolitan chair of Reims.[466] In his former episcopal city the
oppressor triumphed undisturbed; but the day of retribution had already
dawned.

[458] “Concilium iniit cum parochianis et heroibus terræ.” Acta Pontif.

Cenoman., c. 31 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 305). See Mr. Freeman’s note,
Norm. Conq., vol. iii. p. 194, note 3.

[459] Chron. Kemperleg. a. 1008 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. x. p. 294). For
the real date see above, p. 159, note 4{343}.

[460] See below, p. 211.

[461] The author of the Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 31 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal.,
p. 305), calls her “nobilissimam fœminam” and “uxorem fortissimam.”

[462] Acta Pontif. Cenoman., as above.

[463] Concil. Rem. in Labbe, Concilia (ed. Cossart), vol. xix. col. 742.

[464] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1050 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 398).

[465] Acta Pontif. Cenoman. (as above, pp. 305, 306).

[466] Acta Pontif. Cenoman., c. 31 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 306).

The tide of fortune which had borne Geoffrey Martel on from victory
to victory spent its last wave in carrying him to the brow of the
Cenomannian hill. The acquisition of Le Mans was the last outward
mark of his success; the height of his real security had been passed three
years before. The turning-point of Geoffrey’s life was the year 1044. The
settlement of Poitou, the winning of Tours, the capture of Bishop
Gervase, all followed close upon each other; and for the next four years
the count of Anjou was beyond all question the second power in the
kingdom. No one save the duke of Normandy could claim to stand on a
level with the lord of the Angevin march, of Touraine and Saintonge, the
step-father and guardian of the boy-duke of Aquitaine, the virtual master
of Maine. It was with the duke of Normandy that Geoffrey’s last
conquest now brought him into collision. His head had been turned by
his easy and rapid successes; in 1048, on his return from an expedition to
Apulia in company with his wife’s son-in-law the Emperor,[467] he set
himself up against King Henry with a boastful insolence which
threatened to disturb the peace of the whole realm.[468] Five years earlier,
Henry had profited by the feud between Anjou and Blois to win
Geoffrey’s help in putting down the rebellion of Theobald; now he
profited by the jealousy which the state of Cenomannian affairs was just
beginning to create between Anjou and Normandy to win the help of the
Norman Duke William in putting down the rebellion of Geoffrey. The
king’s own operations against Anjou seem to have extended no further
than a successful siege of the castle of Moulinières;[469] after this his
conduct towards William seems to have been copied from that of his
parents towards Fulk the Black three and twenty years before. William,
like Fulk, was left to fight the royal battles single-handed; and to
William, as to Fulk, the task was welcome, for the battle was in truth less
the king’s than his own. Geoffrey Martel, in the pride of his heart, had
openly proclaimed his ambition to crown all his previous triumphs by an
encounter with the only warrior whom he deigned to regard as a foeman
worthy of his steel,[470] and had diligently used all the opportunities for
provoking a quarrel with the Norman which the dependent position of
Maine furnished but too readily. Either by force or guile, or that
judicious mixture of both in which the Angevin house excelled, he had
managed to get into his own hands the two keys of Normandy’s southern
frontier, the castles of Alençon and Domfront, which guarded the valleys
of the Sarthe and the Mayenne;[471] and thence, across the debateable
lands of Bellême, he was now carrying his raids into undisputed Norman
territory.[472]

[467] See Art de vérifier les dates, vol. xiii. p. 54.

[468] Henry was “contumeliosis Gaufredi Martelli verbis irritatus.” Will.

Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 180. “Vexavit idem [sc.
Gaufredus] Franciam universam regi rebellans.” Ib. p. 182.

[469] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 180. Will. Malm.
Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 230 (Hardy, p. 394).

[470] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 181.

[471] Ib. p. 182. Wace, Roman de Rou, vv. 9380–9383 (Pluquet, vol. ii. p.
47).

[472] Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 18. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 276).
Cf. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 396). These two writers
ignore the king’s share in the quarrel, and make it arise solely from
 Geoffrey’s raids upon Normandy (“Brachium levabat in nos quo non leviter
sese vulnerabat,” remarks W. Poitiers, as above). The Gesta Cons.
(Marchegay, Comtes, p. 131) reverse the whole situation and assert that
William attacked the count of Maine, whereupon Geoffrey, as the latter’s
“auxiliator et tutor,” took up the quarrel, and did William a great deal of
damage! Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes, p. 378) wisely limits himself to
the statement that his uncle “had a war with William, duke of the Normans.”

In the autumn of 1048 William set out to dislodge the intruder from
Domfront. It was no light undertaking. The ruined keep which still
stands, a splendid fragment, on the top of a steep wall-like pile of grey
rock, the last spur of a ridge of hills sweeping round from the east, with
the town and the dark woods at its back and the little stream of Varenne
winding close round its foot, may tell something of what the castle was
when its walls stood foursquare, fresh from the builder’s hand, and
manned by the fierce moss-troopers of Bellême, reinforced by a band of
picked soldiers from Anjou.[473] The rock itself was an impregnable
fortress of nature’s own making. To horsemen it was totally inaccessible;
foot-soldiers could only scale it by two narrow and difficult paths.
Assault was hopeless; William’s only chance lay in a blockade, and even
this was an enterprise of danger as well as difficulty, for Domfront stood
in the heart of a dense woodland amid which the Normans were
continually exposed to the ambushes and surprises of the foe. To William
however the forest was simply a hunting-ground through which he rode
day after day, with hawk on wrist, in scornful defiance of its hidden
perils, while the siege was pressed closer and closer all through the
winter’s snows, till at last the garrison were driven to call upon Geoffrey
Martel for relief.[474] What followed reads like an anticipation of the
story of Prestonpans as told in Jacobite song. If we may trust the Norman
tale, Geoffrey not only answered the call, but sent his trumpeter with a
formal challenge to the young duke of the Normans to meet him on the
morrow at break of day beneath the walls of Domfront. But when the sun
rose on that morrow, Geoffrey and all his host were gone.[475] Duke
William’s chaplain, who tells the tale, could see but one obvious
explanation of their departure; and it is impossible to contradict him, for
the whole campaign of 1048 is a blank in the pages of the Angevin
chroniclers. The Hammer of Anjou stands charged with having
challenged Duke William at eventide and run away from him before
sunrise, and no Angevin voice seems ever to have been lifted to deny or
palliate the charge. He had scarcely turned his back when Alençon fell;
and its fall was quickly followed by that of Domfront. William carried
away his engines of war to set them up again on undisputed
Cenomannian ground, at Ambrières on the Mayenne: still Geoffrey made
no movement; William laid the foundations of a castle on the river-bank
at Ambrières, and leaving it securely guarded marched home unmolested
to Rouen.[476]

[473] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 182.

[474] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 182. Will. Malm.
Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, p. 396).

[475] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 183. Cf. Will.
Malm. Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 231 (Hardy, pp. 396, 397).

[476] Will. Poitiers, as above. Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 18 (Duchesne, Hist.

Norm. Scriptt., p. 276). Wace, Roman de Rou, vv. 9430–9635 (Pluquet, vol.
ii. pp. 49–58).

So began the most momentous feud ever waged by the counts of

Anjou. After the first burst of the storm came a lull of nearly seven years,
one of which was marked, as we have seen, by Geoffrey’s final
acquisition of Le Mans; but his power had sustained a shock from which
it never wholly recovered. In the struggles with Normandy which fill the
latter years of Henry I. of France, the king and the count of Anjou play
an almost equally ignoble part. Henry, who had once courted the
friendship of William to ward off the blows of the Angevin Hammer, no
sooner perceived which was really the mightier of the two princes than
he completely reversed his policy, gave an almost open support to the
treasons in William’s duchy, and at length, in 1054, when these indirect
attacks had failed, summoned all the princes of his realm to join him in a
great expedition for the ruin of the duke of Normandy. They flocked to
the muster at Mantes from all quarters save one; strangely enough, the
count of Anjou was missing.[477] Only a few months ago the terror which
clung around Martel’s name and the number of troops at his command
had sufficed to make his stepson William of Aquitaine disband an army
with which he was preparing to encounter him, and sue for peace at his
mere approach;[478] yet it seems that not even with all the forces of king
and kingdom at his side would Geoffrey risk an encounter with the man
whom he had challenged and fled from at Domfront.

[477] Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 24 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 281)

says he was there; but see Mr. Freeman’s remarks, Norm. Conq., vol. iii., p.
 144.

[478] Charter of William of Passavant, dated Montilliers, 1053, in

Archives d’Anjou (Marchegay), vol. i. p. 271. Besly (Comtes de Poitou,
preuves, p. 327) printed it with the date 1043, and it is apparently on this that
the Art de vérifier les dates founds a war between Geoffrey and Peter-
William in that year—an almost impossible thing.

By thus deserting the king at a moment when Henry had every reason
to count upon his support, Geoffrey escaped all part in the rout of
Mortemer; but the consequence was that when peace was made next year
between the king and the duke, one of its clauses authorized William to
make any conquests he could at the expense of the count of Anjou.[479]
William at once sent warning to Geoffrey to expect him and all his forces
at Ambrières within forty days. South of Ambrières, lower down in the
valley of the Mayenne, stands the town which bears the same name as
the river; its lord, Geoffrey, was the chief man of the district. He went in
haste to his namesake and overlord and bitterly complained to him that if
these Normans were left unhindered to work their will at Ambrières, the
whole land would be at their mercy. “Cast me off as a vile and unworthy
lord,” was Martel’s reply, “if thou seest me tamely suffer that which thou
fearest!” But the boast was as vain as the challenge before Domfront.
William completed without hindrance his fortifications at Ambrières; as
soon as his back was turned Geoffrey laid siege to the place, in company
with the duke of Aquitaine and Odo, uncle and guardian of the young
duke of Britanny; but the mere rumour of William’s approach sufficed to
make all three withdraw their troops “with wonderful speed, not to say in
trembling flight.” Geoffrey of Mayenne, made prisoner and left to bear
alone the whole weight of William’s wrath, took the count of Anjou at
his word, and casting off the “vile and unworthy lord” whose desertion
had brought him to this strait, owned himself the “man” of the Norman
duke.[480]

[479] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 187. Will. Malm.
Gesta Reg., l. iii. c. 233 (Hardy, p. 399).

[480] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 187, 188.

Two castles in the heart of Maine thus acknowledged William for their
lord. Three years passed away without further advance from either side;
Geoffrey’s energies were frittered away in minor disputes which brought
him neither gain nor honour. The old quarrel about Nantes woke up once
more and was once more settled in 1057 under circumstances very
discreditable to the count of Anjou. Duke Alan of Britanny died in 1040,
leaving as his heir a boy three months old. The child was at once
snatched from the care of his mother—Bertha of Blois—by his uncle
Odo, who set himself up as duke of Britanny in his stead.[481] The duchy
split up into factions, and for sixteen years all was confusion, aggravated,
there can be little doubt, by the meddlesomeness of Geoffrey of Anjou,
who seems to have taken the opportunity thus offered him for picking a
quarrel with count Hoel of Nantes.[482] In 1056 or 1057, however, a party
among the Breton nobles succeeded in freeing the young Conan, by
whom Odo was shortly afterwards made prisoner in his turn.[483] On this
Geoffrey, it seems, following the traditional policy of the Angevin house
in Britanny, made alliance with his late enemy the count of Nantes; and
Hoel, on some occasion which is not explained, actually ventured to
intrust his capital to Geoffrey’s keeping, whereupon Geoffrey at once
laid a plot for taking possession of it altogether. His treachery however
met the reward which it deserved; he held Nantes for barely forty days,
and then lost it for ever.[484] Troubles were springing up too in another
quarter. Geoffrey’s marriage with the widowed countess of Poitou had
failed to bring him the advantages for which he doubtless hoped when he
carried it through in defiance of public opinion and his father’s will. He
had been unable to keep any hold over his stepsons. Guy-Geoffrey
fought and bargained with the rival claimant of Gascony till he had made
himself sole master of the county: Peter-William, though he bears the
surname of “the Bold,” seems to have kept his land in peace, for his
reign is a blank in which the only break is caused by his quarrels with
Anjou. The first of these, in 1053, came as we have seen to no practical
consequence, and two years later William is found by Geoffrey’s side at
Ambrières. But the tie between them was broken; Geoffrey and Agnes
were no longer husband and wife,[485] and Geoffrey was married to
Grecia of Montreuil. There are sufficient indications of Geoffrey’s
private character to warrant the assumption that the blame of this divorce
rested chiefly upon his shoulders,[486] and it may be that Peter-William
acted as the avenger of his mother’s wrongs. The quarrel, whatever may
have been its grounds, broke out afresh in the spring or early summer of
1058, when the duke of Aquitaine blockaded Geoffrey himself within the
walls of Saumur. But before the end of August a sudden sickness drove
William of Aquitaine home to Poitiers to die,[487] and set the Angevin
count free for one last struggle with William of Normandy.

[481] Chron. Brioc. ad ann. (Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. i. col. 35).

[482] Fulk Rechin mentions among his uncle’s wars one “cum Hoello
comite Nannetensi.” Marchegay, Comtes, p. 378.

[483] Chron. S. Michael. a. 1056 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xi. p. 29). Chron.
Kemperleg. a. 1057 (ib. p. 371).

[484] Chronn. Vindoc. and S. Maxent. a. 1057 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp.

167, 399). The Chron. Britann. in Morice (Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. i. col.
101) records this affair under the year 1040; but on that chronicle’s own
showing Hoel was not count of Nantes till 1051, while the Chron. Brioc. (ib.
col. 36) places his succession in 1054.

[485] The last charter signed by Agnes as countess of Anjou is dated 1050
(Mabille, Introd. Comtes, p. lxxxiii). From 1053 onwards she reappears at the
court of her elder son—generally by the title of “mater comitum”—
witnessing his charters, founding churches in Poitou, and in short holding her
old place as duchess of Aquitaine, while her place as countess of Anjou is
taken by Grecia, widow of Berlay of Montreuil, and mother of Eustachia, the
wife of Agnes’s stepson William the Fat. See Hist. S. Flor. Salm.
(Marchegay, Eglises), p. 293, and Besly, Comtes de Poitou, p. 89.

[486] See a charter of our Lady of Charity (Ronceray) quoted in note to

Hist. S. Flor. Salm. as above.

[487] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1058 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 400).

King Henry was now gathering up his strength for another invasion of
the Norman duchy. This time Geoffrey did not fail him. Both had
discovered, too late, who was really their most dangerous rival, and all
old grudges between them were forgotten in the common instinct of
vengeance upon the common foe. Early in 1058 Henry came to visit the
count at Angers;[488] and the plan of the coming campaign was no doubt
arranged during the time which they then spent together. It was to be
simply a vast plundering-raid; neither king nor count had now any
ambition to meet the duke in open fight. In August they set forth—
Geoffrey, full of zeal, at the head of all the troops which his four counties
could muster. The French and Angevin host went burning and plundering
through the Hiesmois and the Bessin, the central districts of Normandy,
as far as Caen. Half of the confederates’ scheme was accomplished; but
as they crossed the Dive at the ford of Varaville they were overtaken at
once by the inflowing tide and by the duke himself; the two leaders, who
had been the first to cross, could only look helplessly on at the total
destruction of their host, and make their escape from Norman ground as
fast as their horses would carry them.[489] The wars of Henry and
Geoffrey were over. The king died in the summer of 1060; in November
he was followed by the count of Anjou. A late-awakened conscience
moved Geoffrey to meet his end in the abbey of S. Nicolas which had
been founded by his father and completed under his own care. One night
he was borne across the river and received the monastic habit; next
morning at the hour of prime he died.[490]

[488] Henry was at Angers on March 1, 1058; charter in Epitome S.

Nicolai, p. 9, referred to by Mabille, Introd. Comtes, pp. lxxxiii, lxxxiv. The
Chronn. Vindoc. and S. Maxent. place this visit in 1057 (Marchegay, Eglises,
pp. 167, 399).

[489] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 188. Will.

Jumièges, l. vii. c. 28 (ib. p. 283). Wace, Roman de Rou, vv. 10271–10430
(Pluquet, vol. ii. pp. 87–94).

[490] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 379, gives the year and the
day, November 14, 1060. The Chronn. Vindoc. and S. Maxent. (Marchegay,
Eglises, pp. 167, 402) agree with him; the Chron. S. Albin. (ib. p. 25) gives
the same day, but a year later; the Chron. S. Serg. (ib. p. 137) dates the event
in the right year, 1060, but places it on November 13 instead of 14; the
Chron. S. Flor. Salm. (ib. p. 189) says nothing of Geoffrey’s death, but places
both his assumption of the monastic habit and King Henry’s death a year too
early, in 1059.

With him expired the male line of Fulk the Red. But there was no lack
of heirs by the spindle-side. Geoffrey’s eldest nephew was his half-sister
Adela’s son, Fulk “the Gosling,” to whom after long wrangling he had
been compelled to restore the county of Vendôme.[491] He was bound by
closer ties to the two sons of his own sister Hermengard, daughter of
Fulk Nerra and Hildegard, and wife of Geoffrey count of the Gâtinais, a
little district around Châteaulandon near Orléans.[492] Her younger son,
Fulk, was but seventeen years old when at Whitsuntide 1060 he was
knighted by Geoffrey Martel, invested with the government of
Saintonge, and sent to put down a revolt among its people.[493] The elder,
who bore his uncle’s name, was chosen by him for his heir.[494]

[491] Origo Com. Vindoc., in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xi., p. 31. Vendôme
seems however to have counted thenceforth as a dependency of Anjou—and,
for the most part, a loyal and useful one.
 [492] See note A at end of chapter.

[493] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 379. The revolt was headed by
one “Petrus Didonensis.”

[494] See note B at end of chapter.

The dominion which Geoffrey the Hammer thus bequeathed to

Geoffrey the Bearded was no compact, firmly-knit whole; it was a
bundle of four separate states, held on different tenures, and two of them
burthened with a legacy of unsettled feuds. The real character of their
union shewed itself as soon as Martel was gone. What had held them
together was simply the terror of his name, and the dissolution, already
threatening before his death, set in so rapidly that in less than three years
afterwards two out of his four counties were lost to his successor. It was
in fact only the dominions of Fulk the Black—Anjou and Touraine—that
were thoroughly loyal to his son. Geoffrey’s last conquest, Maine, was
only waiting till death should loose the iron grasp that choked her to
recall her ancient line. His earliest conquest, Saintonge, lying further
from the control of the central power, was already drifting back to its
natural Aquitanian master. Young Count Fulk was still at his uncle’s
death-bed when Saintes was surprised and captured by the duke of
Aquitaine,—Guy-Geoffrey of Gascony, who had succeeded his twin-
brother by the title of William VII. William seems to have justified his
aggression on the plea that by the terms of the cession of 1036 Martel
had no right to leave Saintonge to collateral heirs, and that on his death
without children it ought to revert to the duke.[495] The city of Saintes
itself however had been Angevin ever since Fulk Nerra’s days, and a
strong party of citizens devoted to Anjou besought Geoffrey’s successor
to come and deliver them. While the two brothers prepared to march into
Poitou, William gathered an immense force to the siege of Chef-
Boutonne, a castle on a rocky height above the river Boutonne, on the
borders of Poitou and Saintonge. Thence, at the Angevins’ approach, he
descended to meet them in the plain, on S. Benedict’s day, March 21,
1061. The duke’s army, including as it did the whole forces of Gascony
and Aquitaine, must have far outnumbered that of the brother-counts; but
there was treason in the southern ranks; the standard-bearers were the
first to flee, and their flight caused the rout of the whole ducal host.[496]
Saintes threw open its gates to the Angevin victor;[497] but its loss was
only delayed. Next year the duke of Aquitaine blockaded the city till
sword and famine compelled the garrison to surrender;[498] and from that
moment Saintonge was lost to the count of Anjou.

[495] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 126. See note C at end of

chapter.

[496] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1061 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 402). Gesta

Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 126–130. See note C at end of chapter.

[497] Gesta Cons. (as above), p. 130.

[498] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1062 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 403).

Meanwhile a change fraught with far graver consequences had undone

Geoffrey Martel’s work in the north. The conqueror of Le Mans was
scarcely in his grave when Maine flung off the yoke and called upon the
son of her late count Hugh to come home and enjoy his own again. It
was however but a shadowy coronet that she could offer now; her
independence had received a fatal shock; and, to increase the difficulty
of his position, Herbert II. was still a mere boy, without a friend to guide
and protect him except his mother, Bertha of Blois. Bertha saw at once
that his only chance of saving his father’s heritage from the shame of
subjection to Anjou was to throw himself on the honour of the duke of
Normandy; to William therefore, as overlord, Herbert commended
himself and his county, on the terms of the old grant made to Hrolf by
King Rudolf.[499] The commendation was accompanied by an agreement
that Herbert should in due time marry one of William’s daughters; but
there seems to have been a foreboding that the boy-count’s life was not
to be a long one, for it was further provided that if he died without
children Maine should revert in full property to William;[500] and a
marriage was also arranged between William’s eldest son Robert and
Herbert’s sister Margaret, whereby in the next generation the rights of
the “man” and his lord, of the house of Hrolf and the house of Herbert
Wake-Dog, might be united.[501]

[499] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 487). Will. Poitiers
(ibid.), p. 189.

[500] Will. Poitiers, as above.

[501] Ord. Vit. as above.

 In 1064 Herbert died, leaving neither child nor wife. By the treaty
which had seemed so admirably planned to meet all possible
contingencies, his county was now to revert to William; but there was
more than one difficulty to be met before he could take possession of it.
The first was a sudden revival of the Angevin claim. The indifference
with which Geoffrey the Bearded seems to have viewed the transactions
between Herbert and William may perhaps have been due to the pressure
of the war in Saintonge. Far more puzzling than his tardiness in asserting
his rights to the overlordship of Maine is the readiness with which, when
he did assert them, they seem to have been admitted by William.
Geoffrey did not indeed aspire to the actual possession of the county
which his uncle had enjoyed; all that he claimed was its overlordship;
and William, it seems, acknowledged his claim by permitting the little
Robert to do him homage at Alençon and to receive from him a formal
grant of Margaret’s hand together with the whole honour of Maine.[502]
Geoffrey’s action is easily accounted for. His only reasonable course was
to make a compromise with Normandy: the wonder is that he was
allowed to make it on such favourable terms. If the story is correct, the
truth probably is that compromise was at this moment almost as needful
to William as to Geoffrey, for any Angevin intermeddling in Maine
would have rendered his difficulties there all but insurmountable. One
clause of the treaty of 1061—the marriage of Robert and Margaret—was
still in the remote future, for the bridegroom cannot have been more than
nine years old, and the bride was far away in what a Norman writer
vaguely describes as “Teutonic parts.”[503] There being thus no security
that the county would ever revert to the descendants of its ancient rulers,
Cenomannian loyalty turned its hopes from Hugh’s young daughter to
her aunts, the three daughters of Herbert Wake-the-dog, of whom the
nearest to the spot was Biota, the wife of Walter of Mantes, sister’s son
to Eadward the Confessor.[504] In his wife’s name Walter laid claim to
the whole county of Maine, and a considerable part of it at once passed
into his hands. The capital was held for him by Hubert of Sᵗᵉ-Suzanne
and Geoffrey of Mayenne—that same Geoffrey who, deceived in his
Angevin overlord, had yielded a compulsory homage to William, and
now, casting off all foreign masters alike, proved the most determined
champion of his country’s independence. It was between William and
Geoffrey of Mayenne that the contest really lay; and again the duke
proved victorious. The conqueror made his “joyous entry” into Le Mans,
and sent for the little Margaret to be kept under his own protection until
her marriage could take place. But before the wedding-day arrived she
lay in her grave at Fécamp; Walter and Biota had already come to a
mysterious end; and the one gallant Cenomannian who held out when
Walter and all else had yielded—Geoffrey of Mayenne—was at length
compelled to surrender.[505] Thenceforth William ruled Maine as its
Conqueror, and as long as he lived, save for one brief moment, the
homage due to Anjou was heard of no more.

[502] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 532. The story is
somewhat suspicious, because Orderic tells it not in its proper place, but in a
sort of summary of Cenomannian history, introductory to the war of 1073; so
that it looks very much like a confused anticipation of the treaty of
Blanchelande (see below, p. 223). Still there is nothing intrinsically
impossible in it, and I do not feel justified in rejecting it without further
evidence.

[503] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 190.

[504] On the pedigree of the house of Maine see note D at end of chapter.

[505] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 190, 191. Will.
Jumièges, l. vii. c. 27 (ib. p. 283). Ord. Vit. (ibid.) pp. 487, 488.

The rapid decline of the Angevin power after Geoffrey Martel’s death
was due partly to the reaction which often follows upon a sudden rise,
partly to the exceptional greatness of the rival with whom the Angevin
count had to deal in the person of William the Conqueror. But behind
and beyond these two causes lay a third more fatal than either. The house
of Anjou was divided against itself. From the hour of Martel’s death, a
bitter dispute over his testamentary dispositions had been going on
between his nephews. To young Fulk it seemed an unpardonable wrong
that he was left without provision—for even Saintonge, as we have seen,
had now slipped from his grasp—while his elder brother was in full
possession not only of the paternal county of Gâtinais but also of their
uncle’s heritage. In later days Fulk went so far as to declare that his uncle
had intended to make him sole heir, to the complete exclusion of
Geoffrey the Bearded.[506] Fulk is in one aspect a very interesting person.
Almost the sole authority which we possess for the history of the early
Angevin counts is a fragment written in his name. If it be indeed his
work—and criticism has as yet failed to establish any other conclusion—
Fulk Rechin is not merely the earliest historian of Anjou; he is well-nigh
the first lay historian of the Middle Ages.[507] But in every other point of
view he deserves nothing but aversion and contempt. His very surname
tells its own tale; in one of the most quarrelsome families known to
history, he was pre-eminently distinguished as “the Quarreller.”[508] With
the turbulence, the greed, the wilfulness of his race he had also their craft
and subtlety, their plausible, insinuating, serpent-like cleverness; but he
lacked the boldness of conception, the breadth of view and loftiness of
aim, the unflinching perseverance, the ungrudging as well as
unscrupulous devotion to a great and distant end, which lifted their
subtlety into statesmanship and their cleverness into genius. The same
qualities in him degenerated into mere artfulness and low cunning, and
were used simply to meet his own personal needs and desires of the
moment, not to work out any far-reaching train of policy. He is the only
one of the whole line of Angevin counts, till we reach the last and worst
of all, whose ruling passion seems to have been not ambition but self-
indulgence. Every former count of Anjou, from Fulk the Red to Geoffrey
Martel, had toiled and striven, and sinned upon occasion, quite as much
for his heirs as for himself: Fulk Rechin toiled and sinned for himself
alone. All the thoroughness which they threw into the pursuit of their
house’s greatness he threw simply into the pursuit of his own selfish
desires. Had Geoffrey the Bearded possessed the highest capacities, he
could have done little for his own or his country’s advancement while his
brother’s restless intrigues were sowing strife and discontent among the
Angevin baronage and turning the whole land into a hotbed of treason.
[509] Geoffrey’s cause was however damaged by his own imprudence. An
act of violent injustice to the abbey of Marmoutier brought him under the
ban of the Church;[510] and from that moment his ruin became certain.
From within and without, troubles crowded upon the Marchland and its
unhappy count. The comet which scared all Europe in 1066 was the
herald of evil days to Anjou as well as to the land with which she was
one day to be linked so closely. In that very year a Breton invasion was
only checked by the sudden death of Duke Conan just after he had
received the surrender of Châteaugonthier.[511] Next spring, on the first
Sunday in Lent, Saumur was betrayed by its garrison to Fulk Rechin;[512]
on the Wednesday before Easter he was treacherously admitted into
Angers, and Geoffrey fell with his capital into the clutches of his brother.
[513] The citizens next day rose in a body and slew the chief traitors;[514]

the disloyalty of Saumur was punished by the duke of Aquitaine, who

profited by the distracted state of Anjou to cross the border and fire the
town;[515] while the remonstrances of Pope Alexander II. soon compelled
Fulk to release his brother.[516] Next year, however, Geoffrey was again
taken prisoner while besieging Fulk’s castle of Brissac.[517] This time the
king of France, alarmed no doubt by the revelation of such a temper
among his vassals, took up arms for Geoffrey’s restoration, and he was
joined by Count Stephen of Blois, the son of Theobald from whom
Geoffrey Martel had won Tours. Fulk bought off both his assailants.
Stephen, who was now governing the territories of Blois as regent for his
aged father, was pacified by receiving Fulk’s homage for Touraine; the
king was bribed more unblushingly still, by the cession of what was
more undeniably Geoffrey’s lawful property than any part of the
Angevin dominions—his paternal heritage of the Gâtinais.[518] It thus
became Philip’s interest as well as Fulk’s to keep Geoffrey in prison. For
the next twenty-eight years he lay in a dungeon at Chinon,[519] and Fulk
ruled Anjou in his stead.

[506] See note B at end of chapter.

[507] “It needs some self-sacrifice to give up the only lay historian whom
we have come across since the days of our own Æthelweard.” Freeman,
Norm. Conq., 3d ed. vol. ii. p. 638.

[508] This seems to be the meaning of “Rechin.”

[509] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 138, 139.

[510] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 134–137. See also Rer. Gall.
Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 664, note.

[511] Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 33 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt., p. 286).

Chron. Brioc. and Chron. Britann. a. 1066 (Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol.
i. cols. 36, 102). Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Serg. and Vindoc. a. 1067
(Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 12, 137, 168)—which, however, means 1066, as all
these chronicles place both the comet and the conquest in the same year.

[512] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1067 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 403, 404). This
was February 25 (ibid.).

[513] Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S. Serg., Vindoc. a. 1067 (ib. pp.
12, 25, 137, 138, 168). Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 138, 139),
antedated by a year.

[514] Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin. (as above); S. Serg. (ib. p. 138);
Vindoc. (ib. pp. 168, 169).

[515] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1067 (ib. p. 404).

[516] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 379.

[517] Ib. pp. 379, 380. Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S. Serg. and
Vindoc. a. 1068 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 12, 26, 138, 169).
 [518] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 139. Chron. Turon. Magn. a.
1067 (Salmon, Chron. de Touraine, p. 125)—a date which must be at least a
year too early.

[519] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 723, 818. He makes it
thirty years, but the dates are undoubtedly 1068–1096.

That time was a time of shame and misery such as the Marchland had
never yet seen. Eight years of civil war had fostered among the barons of
Anjou and Touraine a spirit of turbulence and lawlessness which Fulk,
whose own intrigues had sown the first seeds of the mischief, was
powerless to control. Throughout the whole of his reign, all southern
Touraine was kept in confusion by a feud among the landowners at
Amboise;[520] and it can hardly have been the only one of its kind under
a ruler who, instead of putting it down with a strong hand, only
aggravated it by his undignified and violent intermeddling. Nor were his
foreign relations better regulated than his home policy. For a moment, in
1073, an opportunity seemed to present itself of regaining the lost
Angevin overlordship over Maine. Ten years of Angevin rule had failed
to crush out the love of independence among the Cenomannian people;
ten years of Norman rule had just as little effect. While their conqueror
was busied with the settlement of his later and greater conquest beyond
sea, the patriots of Maine seized a favourable moment to throw off the
Norman yoke. Hugh of Este or of Liguria, a son of Herbert Wake-the-
dog’s eldest daughter Gersendis, was received as count under the
guardianship of his mother and Geoffrey of Mayenne. But Geoffrey, who
in the hour of adversity ten years before had seemed little short of a hero,
yielded to the temptations of power; and his tyranny drove the
Cenomannians to fall back upon the traditions of their old municipal
freedom and “make a commune”—in other words, to set up a civic
commonwealth such as those which were one day to be the glory of the
more distant Cenomannian land on the other side of the Alps. At Le
Mans, however, the experiment was premature. It failed through the
treachery of Geoffrey of Mayenne; and the citizens, in the extremity of
despair, called upon Fulk of Anjou to save them at once from Geoffrey
and from William. Fulk readily helped them to dislodge Geoffrey from
the citadel of Le Mans;[521] but as soon as William appeared in Maine
with a great army from over sea Fulk, like his uncle, vanished. Only
when the conqueror had “won back the land of Maine”[522] and returned
in triumph to Normandy did Fulk venture to attack La Flèche, a castle on
the right bank of the Loir, close to the Angevin border, and held by John,
husband of Herbert Wake-dog’s youngest daughter Paula.[523] At John’s
request William sent a picked band of Norman troops to reinforce the
garrison of La Flèche; Fulk at once collected all his forces and persuaded
Hoel duke of Britanny to bring a large Breton host to help him in
besieging the place. A war begun on such a scale as this might be
nominally an attack on John, but it was practically an attack on William.
He took it as such, and again calling together his forces, Normans and
English, led them down to the relief of La Flèche. Instead, however, of
marching straight to the spot, he crossed the Loir higher up and swept
round to the southward through the territories of Anjou, thus putting the
river between himself and his enemies. The movement naturally drew
Fulk back across the river to defend his own land against the Norman
invader.[524] The two armies drew up facing each other on a wide moor
or heath stretching along the left bank of the Loir between La Flèche and
Le Lude, and overgrown with white reindeer-moss, whence it took the
name of Blanchelande. No battle however took place; some clergy who
were happily at hand stepped in as mediators, and after a long
negotiation peace was arranged. The count of Anjou again granted the
investiture of Maine to Robert of Normandy, and, like his predecessor,
received the young man’s homage to himself as overlord.[525] Like the
treaty of Alençon, the treaty of Blanchelande was a mere formal
compromise; William kept it a dead letter by steadily refusing to make
over Maine to his son, and holding it as before by the right of his own
good sword. A few years later Fulk succeeded in accomplishing his
vengeance upon John of La Flèche by taking and burning his castle;[526]
but the expedition seems to have been a mere border-raid, and so long as
William lived neither native patriotism nor Angevin meddlesomeness
ventured again to question his supremacy over Maine.

[520] Gesta Amb. Domin. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 175 et seq.

[521] Acta Pontif. Cenoman. c. 33 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 308).

[522] Eng. Chron. a. 1074.

[523] See note D at end of chapter.

[524] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 533. See note E at end
of chapter.

[525] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 533.

 [526] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1081 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 26). See note E at
end of chapter.

But on his death in 1087 the advantage really given to Anjou by the
treaties of Alençon and Blanchelande at last became apparent. From the
moment when Robert came into actual possession of the fief with which
he had been twice invested by an Angevin count, the Angevin
overlordship could no longer be denied or evaded. The action of the
Cenomannians forced their new ruler to throw himself upon Fulk’s
support. Their unquenchable love of freedom caught at the first ray of
hope offered them by Robert’s difficulties in his Norman duchy and
quarrels with his brother the king of England, and their attitude grew so
alarming that in 1089 Robert, lying sick at Rouen, sent for the count of
Anjou and in a personal interview besought him to use his influence in
preventing their threatened revolt. Fulk consented, on condition that, as
the price of his good offices, Robert should obtain for him the hand of a
beautiful Norman lady, Bertrada of Montfort.[527] Fulk’s domestic life
was as shameless as his public career. He had already one wife dead and
two living; Hermengard of Bourbon, whom he had married in 1070[528]
and who was the mother of his heir,[529] had been abandoned in 1075
without even the formality of a divorce for Arengard of Châtel-Aillon;
[530] and Arengard was now set aside in her turn to make way for

Bertrada.[531] These scandals had already brought Fulk under a Papal

sentence of excommunication;[532] he met with a further punishment at
the hands of his new bride. Bertrada used him simply as a stepping-stone
to higher advancement; on Whitsun-Eve 1093 she eloped with King
Philip of France.[533]

[527] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 681.

[528] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1070.

[529] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 140.

[530] According to a charter in Marchegay, Documents inédits sur l’Anjou,

p. 96, Fulk married Arengard on Saturday the feast of S. Agnes (January 21)
1075—i.e. what we call 1076, as the year was usually reckoned in Gaul from
Easter to Easter; see editor’s note 4, as above. The Art de vérifier les dates,
however (vol. xiii. p. 62), refers to a document in Dom Huyne’s collection
where the marriage is dated 1087.

[531] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 681, seems to date
Bertrada’s marriage about 1089. The Chron. Turon. Magn. puts it in 1091
 (Salmon, Chron. Touraine, vol. i. p. 128); but a charter in Marchegay,
Archives d’Anjou, vol. i. p. 365, shows that it had already taken place in
April 1090.

[532] Gregor. VII. Epp., l. ix. ep. 22. Fulk’s violence to the archbishop of
Tours had also something to do with his excommunication; see ib. ep. 23;
Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1081 (Salmon, Chron. Touraine, vol. i. p. 126), and
Narratio Controversiæ in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 459. So too had his
imprisonment of his brother; Rer. Gall. Scriptt. as above, p. 664, note.

[533] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1093 (as above, p. 128).

By that time Maine was again in revolt. The leader of the rising was
young Elias of La Flèche, a son of John and Paula; but his place was
soon taken by the veteran Geoffrey of Mayenne, whose treasons seem to
have been forgiven and forgotten, and who now once more installed
Hugh of Este as count at Le Mans. Hugh proved however utterly unfit
for his honourable but dangerous position, and gladly sold his claims to
his cousin Elias.[534] For nearly six years the Cenomannians were free to
rejoice in a ruler of their own blood and their own spirit. We must go to
the historian of his enemies if we would hear his praises sung;[535] his
own people had no need to praise him in words; for them he was simply
the incarnation of Cenomannian freedom; his bright, warm-hearted,
impulsive nature spoke for itself. The strength as well as the charm of his
character lay in its perfect sincerity; its faults were as undisguised as its
virtues. In the gloomy tale of public wrong and private vice which makes
up the history of the time—the time of Fulk Rechin, Philip I. and
William Rufus—the only figure which shines out bright against the
darkness, except the figure of S. Anselm himself, is that of Count Elias
of Maine.

[534] Acta Pontif. Cenoman. c. 34 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal.), pp. 310–312.

Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 683, 684.

[535] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 768, 769.

During these years Anjou interfered with him as little as Normandy;

Fulk was overwhelmed with domestic and ecclesiastical troubles. His
excommunication was at length removed in 1094;[536] two years later
Pope Urban II., on his way to preach the Crusade in western Gaul, was
received by the count at Angers and consecrated the abbey church of S.
Nicolas, now at length brought to completion.[537] From Angers Urban
passed to Tours and Le Mans; and among the many hearts stirred by his
call to take the cross there can have been few more earnest than that of
Elias of Maine. Robert of Normandy was already gone, leaving his
dominions pledged to his brother the king of England. Elias prepared to
follow him; but when his request to William Rufus for the protection due
to a crusader’s lands during his absence was met by a declaration of the
Red King’s resolve to regain all the territories which had been held by
his father, the count of Maine saw that he must fight out his crusade not
in Holy Land but at home. The struggle had scarcely begun when he was
taken prisoner by Robert of Bellême, and sent in chains to the king at
Rouen.[538] The people of Maine, whose political existence seemed
bound up in their count, were utterly crushed by his loss. But there was
another enemy to be faced. Aremburg, the only child of Elias, was
betrothed to Fulk Rechin’s eldest son, Geoffrey,[539] whose youthful
valour had won him the surname of “Martel the Second;” Geoffrey
hurried to save the heritage of his bride, and Fulk was no less eager to
seize the opportunity of asserting once more his rights to the
overlordship of Maine.[540] The Cenomannians gladly welcomed the
only help that was offered them; and while Geoffrey reinforced the
garrison of Le Mans, Fulk tried to effect a diversion on the border.[541]
But meanwhile Elias had guessed his design, and frustrated it by making
terms with the Norman.[542] If Maine must needs bow to a foreign yoke,
even William Rufus was at least a better master than Fulk Rechin. To
William, therefore, Elias surrendered his county as the price of his own
release;[543] and to William he offered his services with the trustful
frankness of a heart to which malice was unknown. The offer was
refused. Then, from its very ashes, the spirit of Cenomannian freedom
rose up once more, and for the second time Elias hurled his defiance at
the Red King. An Angevin count in William’s place would probably
have flung the bold speaker straight back into the dungeon whence he
had come; the haughty chivalry of the Norman only bade him begone
and do his worst.[544] In the spring Elias fought his way back to Le
Mans, where the people welcomed him with clamorous delight;
William’s unexpected approach, however, soon compelled him to
withdraw;[545] and Maine had to wait two more years for her deliverance.
It came with the news of the Red King’s death in August 1100. Robert of
Normandy was too indolent, Henry of England too wise, to answer the
appeal for succour made to each in turn by the Norman garrison of Le
Mans; Elias received their submission and sent them home in peace;[546]
and thenceforth the foreign oppressor trod the soil of Maine no more.
When the final struggle for Normandy broke out between Robert and
Henry, Elias, with characteristic good sense, commended himself to the
one overlord whom he saw to be worthy of his homage.[547] Henry was
wise enough loyally to accept the service and the friendship which Rufus
had scorned; and he proved its value on the field of Tinchebray, where
Elias and his Cenomannians decided the battle in his favour, and thus
made him master of Normandy. On the other hand, the dread of Angevin
tyranny had changed into a glad anticipation of peaceful and equal union.
The long battle of Cenomannian freedom, so often baffled and so often
renewed, was won at last. When next a duke of Normandy disputed the
possession of Maine with a count of Anjou, he disputed it not with a
rival oppressor but with the husband of its countess, the lawful heir of
Elias; and the triumph of Cenomannia received its fitting crown when
Henry’s daughter wedded Aremburg’s son in the minster of S. Julian at
Le Mans.

[536] Letter of the legate, Archbishop Hugh of Lyons, dated S. Florence of

Saumur, S. John Baptist’s day, 1094; Gallia Christiana, vol. iv., instrum.
cols. 10, 11.

[537] Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S. Serg., a. 1095 (Marchegay,

Eglises, pp. 14, 27, 140); Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1096 (ib. p. 411). This last is
the right year; see the itinerary of Pope Urban in Gaul, in Rer. Gall. Scriptt.,
vol. xii. pp. 3 note m, and 65 note d.

[538] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 769–771. Acta Pontif.
Cenoman. c. 35 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 313). The exact date of the capture
is April 20, 1098; Chron. S. Albin. ad ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 28).

[539] Acta Pontif. Cenoman. c. 35 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 313). Gesta

Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 142.

[540] “Quia capitalis dominus erat.” Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm.
Scriptt.), p. 772.

[541] Ibid. Acta Pontif. Cenoman., as above.

[542] Acta Pontif. Cenoman. (as above), p. 314.

[543] Ibid. Ord. Vit., as above.

[544] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 773.

[545] Ib. pp. 774, 775. Acta Pontif. Cenoman., as above.

[546] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 784, 785.

[547] Ib. p. 822.

 The union of Anjou and Maine did not, however, come to pass exactly
as it had been first planned; Aremburg became the wife of an Angevin
count, but he was not Geoffrey Martel the Second. That marriage, long
deferred by reason of the bride’s youth, was frustrated in the end by the
death of the bridegroom. His life had been far from an easy one. Fulk,
prematurely worn out by a life of vice, had for some years past made
over the cares of government to Geoffrey.[548] Father and son agreed as
ill as their namesakes in a past generation; but this time the fault was not
on the young man’s side. Geoffrey, while spending all his energies in
doing his father’s work, saw himself supplanted in that father’s affection
by his little half-brother, Bertrada’s child. He found a friend in his
unhappy uncle, Geoffrey the Bearded, whose reason had been almost
destroyed by half a lifetime of captivity; and a touching story relates how
the imprisoned count in a lucid interval expressed his admiration for his
nephew’s character, and voluntarily renounced in his favour the rights
which he still persisted in maintaining against Fulk.[549] On the strength
of this renunciation Geoffrey Martel, backed by Pope Urban, at length
extorted his father’s consent to the liberation of the captive. It was,
however, too late to be of much avail; reason and health were both alike
gone, and all that the victim gained by his nephew’s care was that, when
he died shortly after, he at least died a free man.[550] His bequest availed
as little to Geoffrey Martel; in 1103, Fulk openly announced his intention
of disinheriting his valiant son in favour of Bertrada’s child. A brief
struggle, in which Fulk was backed by the duke of Aquitaine and
Geoffrey by Elias, ended in Fulk’s abdication. For three years Geoffrey
ruled well and prosperously,[551] till in May 1106, as he was besieging a
rebellious vassal in the castle of Candé on the Loire, he was struck by a
poisoned arrow and died next morning.[552] The bitter regrets of his
people, as they laid him to sleep beside his great-uncle in the church of
S. Nicolas at Angers,[553] were intensified by a horrible suspicion that his
death had been contrived by Bertrada, and that Fulk himself condoned
her crime.[554] It is doubtful whether her child, who now had to take his
brother’s place, had even grown up among his own people; she had
perhaps carried her baby with her, or persuaded the weak count to let her
have him and bring him up at court; there, at any rate, he was at the time
of Geoffrey’s death. Philip granted him the investiture of Anjou in
Geoffrey’s stead, and commissioned Duke William of Aquitaine, who
happened to be at court, to escort him safe home to his father. The
Poitevin, however, conveyed him away into his own territories, and there
put him in prison. Philip’s threats, Bertrada’s persuasions, alike proved
unavailing, till the boy’s own father purchased his release by giving up
some border-towns to Poitou, and after a year’s captivity young Fulk at
last came home.[555] Two years later, on April 14, 1109, he was left sole
count of Anjou by the death of Fulk Rechin.[556]

[548] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1098 (Salmon, Chron. Touraine, p. 130).

[549] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 141.

[550] Ibid. Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1098 (Salmon, Chron. Touraine, p.

128). Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 723.

[551] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 818. Chron. S. Albin. a. 1103–1105

(Marchegay, Eglises, p. 30).

[552] Ord. Vit. as above. Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S. Serg.,

Vindoc., S. Flor. Salm., S. Maxent., a. 1106 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 15, 16,
30, 142, 171, 190, 423). The three first-named chronicles give the day as
May 19, the Chron. S. Maxent. makes it May 26, and according to M.
Marchegay’s note (as above, p. 171) the obituary of S. Maurice makes it June
1. This, however, might be owing to an accidental omission of the “xiv.” (or
“vii.”) before Kal. Junii. The Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 142,
places the death a year later.

[553] Ord. Vit. and Gesta Cons. as above.

[554] Gesta Cons. as above. Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1108 (Salmon,

Chron. Touraine, p. 130). See also a quotation from Le Pelletier’s Epitome S.
Nicolai, in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 486, note.

[555] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 818. Will. Tyr., l. xiv.
c. 1, has a different version, which does not look authentic.

[556] Chron. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., Vindoc., S. Flor. Salm. ad ann.

(Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 16, 31, 172, 190). The Chronn. S. Serg. and S.
Maxent. (ib. pp. 143, 424), date it 1108.

“Ill he began; worse he lived; worst of all he ended.”[557] Such is the

verdict of a later Angevin historian upon the man whom we should have
been glad to respect as the father of Angevin history. Fulk Rechin’s utter
worthlessness had well-nigh undone the work of Geoffrey Martel and
Fulk the Black; amid the wreck of the Angevin power in his hands, the
only result of their labours which seemed still to remain was the mere
territorial advantage involved in the possession of Touraine. Politically,
Anjou had sunk far below the position which she had held in the Black
Count’s earliest days; she had not merely ceased to be a match for the
greatest princes of the realm, she had ceased to be a power in the realm
at all. The title of count of Anjou, for nearly a hundred years a very
synonym of energy and progress, had become identified with weakness
and disgrace. The black cloud of ruin seemed to be settling down over
the marchland, only waiting its appointed time to burst and pour upon
her its torrent of destruction. It proved to be only the dark hour before
the dawn of the brightest day that Anjou had seen since her great Count
Fulk was laid in his grave at Beaulieu—perhaps even since her good
Count Fulk was laid in his grave at Tours.

[557] Hist. Abbr. Com. Andeg. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 360.

Nearly nine months before the death of Fulk Rechin, Louis VI. had
succeeded his father Philip as king of France.[558] His accession marks
an era in the growth of the French monarchy. It is a turning-point in the
struggle of the feudataries with the Crown, or rather with each other for
control over the Crown, which lay at the root of the rivalry between
Anjou and Blois, and which makes up almost the whole history of the
first three generations of the kingly house founded by Hugh Capet. The
royal authority was a mere name; but that name was still the centre round
which the whole complicated system of French feudalism revolved; it
was the one point of cohesion among the various and ill-assorted
members which made up the realm of France, in the wider sense which
that word was now beginning to bear. The duke or count of almost any
one of the great fiefs—Normandy, Flanders, Burgundy, Aquitaine—was
far more really powerful and independent than the king, who was
nominally the lord paramount of them all, but practically the tool of each
in turn. In this seemingly ignominious position of the Crown there was,
however, an element of hidden strength which in the end enabled it to
swallow up and outlive all its rivals. The end was as yet far distant; but
the first step towards it was taken when Louis the Fat was crowned at
Reims in August 1109. At the age of thirty-two he ascended the throne
with a fixed determination to secure such an absolute authority within
the immediate domains of the Crown as should enable him to become the
master instead of the servant of his feudataries.

[558] Hist. Franc. Fragm. (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii.), p. 7.

 This policy led almost of necessity to a conflict with King Henry of
England, who had now become master of Normandy by his victory at
Tinchebray. Louis appears never to have received Henry’s homage for
the duchy;[559] and it may have been to avoid the necessity of performing
this act of subordination that Henry, as it seems, refrained from formally
assuming the ducal title, at least so long as his captive brother lived.[560]
Whatever may have been his motive, the fact aptly typifies his political
position. Alike in French and English eyes, he was a king of England
ruling Normandy as a dependency of the English Crown. Such a
personage was far more obnoxious to Louis and his projects than a mere
duke of the Normans, or even a duke of the Normans ruling England as a
dependency of the Norman duchy. On the other hand, Henry, in the new
position given him by his conquest, had every reason to look with
jealousy and suspicion upon the growing power of France. The uncertain
relations between the two kings therefore soon took an openly hostile
turn. In 1110 a quarrel arose between them concerning the ownership of
the great border-fortress of Gisors. They met near the spot, each at the
head of an army; but they parted again after wasting a day in fruitless
recriminations and empty challenges.[561] Their jealousy was quickened
by a dispute, also connected with the possession of a castle, between
Louis and Henry’s nephew Theobald count of Blois.[562] Uncle and
nephew made common cause against their common enemy; but the strife
had scarcely begun when a further complication destined to be of far
weightier consequence, if not to France at least to England, arose out of
the position and policy of the young count of Anjou.

[559] See Freeman, Norm. Conq., vol. v. p. 193.

[560] Freeman, Norm. Conq., vol. v. p. 180 and note 2.

[561] Suger, Vita Ludov., c. 15 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. pp. 27, 28).

[562] Ib. c. 18 (pp. 35, 36).

The accession of Fulk V., no less than that of Louis VI., began a new
era for his country. The two princes were in some respects not unlike
each other: each stands out in marked contrast to his predecessor, and in
Fulk’s case the contrast is even more striking than in that of Louis, for if
little good was to be expected of the son of Philip I., there might well be
even less hope of the child of Fulk Rechin and Bertrada. As a ruler and
as a man, however, young Fulk turned utterly aside from the evil ways of
both his parents.[563] Yet he was an Angevin of the Angevins; physically,
he had the ruddy complexion inherited from the first of his race and
name;[564] while in his restless, adventurous temper, at once impetuous
and wary, daring and discreet, he shows a strong likeness to his great-
grandfather Fulk the Black. But the old fiery spirit breaks out in Fulk V.
only as if to remind us that it is still there, to shew that the demon-blood
of Anjou still flows in his veins, hot as ever indeed, but kept under
subjection to higher influences; the sense of right that only woke now
and then to torture the conscience of the Black Count seems to be the
guiding principle of his great-grandson’s life. The evil influences which
must have surrounded his boyhood, whether it had been passed in his
father’s house, or, as seems more probable, in the court of Philip and
Bertrada, seem, instead of developing the worse tendencies of his nature,
only to have brought out the better ones into more active working by
sheer force of opposition. Politically, however, there can be no doubt that
the peculiar circumstances of his early life led to important results, by
reviving and strengthening the old ties between Anjou and the Crown
which had somewhat slackened in Fulk Rechin’s days. The most trusted
counsellor of the new king, the devoted supporter and not unfrequently
the instigator of his schemes of reform or of aggression, was Almeric of
Montfort, the brother of Bertrada. She herself, after persecuting Louis by
every means in her power so long as his father lived, changed her policy
as soon as he mounted the throne and became as useful an ally as she had
been a dangerous enemy. Almeric’s influence, won by his own talents,
seems to have been almost all-powerful with the king; over the count of
Anjou, far younger and utterly inexperienced, natural ties had given a yet
more complete ascendency to him and his sister, Fulk’s own mother.
Their policy was to pledge Anjou irrevocably to the side of the French
crown by forcing it into a quarrel with Henry I.

[563] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 143.

[564] “Vir rufus, sed instar David.” Will. Tyr. l. xiv. c. 1.

The means lay ready to their hands. Aremburg of Maine, once the
plighted bride of Geoffrey Martel, was still unwed; Fulk, by his mother’s
counsel, sought and won her for his wife.[565] Her marriage crowned the
work of Elias. The patriot-count’s mission was fulfilled, his task was
done; and in that very summer he passed to his well-earned rest.[566]
Fulk, as husband of the heiress, thus became count of Maine, and the
immediate consequence was a breach with Henry on the long-vexed
question of the overlordship of the county. Whether Elias had or had not
recognized any right of overlordship in Fulk Rechin or Geoffrey Martel
II. is not clear; he certainly seems to have done homage to Henry,[567]
and their mutual relations as lord and vassal were highly honourable to
both; but it was hardly to be expected that Fulk, whose predecessors had
twice received the homage of Henry’s elder brother for that very county,
should yield up without a struggle the rights of the count of Anjou. He
refused all submission to Henry, and at once formed a league with the
French Crown in active opposition to the lord of England and Normandy.

[565] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 785, 818. Gesta
Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 143. Will. Tyr., l. xiv. c. 1.

[566] Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1110 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 31,
143). Eng. Chron. a. 1110. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp.
785, 839.

[567] “Eac thises geares forthferde Elias eorl, the tha Mannie of tham
cynge Heanri geheold, and on cweow.” Eng. Chron. a. 1110. Nobody seems
to know what “on cweow” means; Mr. Thorpe (Eng. Chron., vol. ii. p. 211)
suggests that it may stand for “Angeow.”

The war began in 1111, and the danger was great enough to call Henry
himself over sea in August and keep him on the continent for nearly two
years. The leading part was taken by the count of Anjou, whose marriage
enabled him to add the famous “Cenomannian swords” to the forces of
Touraine and the Angevin March.[568] Moreover, treason was, as usual,
rife among the Norman barons; and the worst of all the traitors was
Robert of Bellême. One after another the lesser offenders were brought
to justice; at last, in November 1112, Robert himself fell into the hands
of his outraged sovereign, and, to the joy of all men on both sides of the
sea, was flung into a lifelong captivity.[569] Then at last Henry felt secure
in Normandy; the capture of Robert was followed by the surrender of his
fortress of Alençon, and the tide of fortune turned so rapidly that Fulk
and Louis were soon compelled to sue for peace. Early in Lent 1113 Fulk
and Henry met at Pierre-Pécoulée near Alençon; the count submitted to
perform the required homage for Maine, and his infant daughter was
betrothed to Henry’s son, the little Ætheling William. In March the treaty
was confirmed by the two kings at Gisors; and as the first-fruits of their
new alliance there was seen the strange spectacle of a count of Anjou
and a count of Blois fighting side by side to help the lord of Normandy
in subduing the rebels who still held out in the castle of Bellême.[570]

[568] Eng. Chron. a. 1111, 1112.

[569] Eng. Chron. a. 1112. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp.
841, 858. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 398 (Hardy, p. 626).

[570] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 841.

Henry’s next step was to exact, first from the barons of Normandy and
then from the Great Council of England, a solemn oath of homage and
fealty to his son William as his destined successor.[571] This ceremony,
not unusual in France, but quite without precedent in England, was
doubtless a precaution against the chances of the war which he foresaw
must soon be renewed. This time indeed he was himself the aggressor;
Louis had made no hostile movement, and Fulk was troubled by a revolt
at home, whose exact nature is not clearly ascertained. The universal
tendency of feudal vassals to rebel against their lord had probably
something to do with it; but there seems also to have been another and a
far more interesting element at work. “There arose a grave dissension
between Count Fulk the Younger and the burghers of Angers.”[572] In
this provokingly brief entry in one of the Angevin chronicles we may
perhaps catch a glimpse of that new spirit of civic freedom which was
just springing into life in northern Europe, and which made some
progress both in France and in England during the reigns of Louis VI.
and Henry I. One would gladly know what were the demands of the
Angevin burghers, and how they were met by the son-in-law of Elias of
Le Mans; but the faint echo of the dispute between count and citizens is
drowned in the roar of the more imposing strife which soon broke out
anew between the rival kings. Its ostensible cause was now Count
Theobald of Blois, whose wrongs were made by his uncle a ground for
marching into France, in company with Theobald himself and his brother
Stephen, in the spring of 1116. Louis retaliated by a raid upon
Normandy; the Norman barons recommenced their old intrigues;[573] and
they were soon furnished with an excellent pretext. After the battle of
Tinchebray, Duke Robert’s infant son William had been intrusted by his
victorious uncle to the care of his half-sister’s husband, Elias of Saint-
Saëns. Elias presently began to suspect Henry of evil designs against the
child; at once, sacrificing his own possessions to Henry’s wrath, he fled
with his charge and led him throughout all the neighbouring lands,
seeking to stir up sympathy for the fugitive heir of Normandy, till he
found him a shelter at the court of his kinsman Count Baldwin of
Flanders.[574] At last the faithful guardian’s zeal was rewarded by seeing
the cause of his young brother-in-law taken up by both Baldwin and
Louis. In 1117 they leagued themselves together with the avowed object
of avenging Duke Robert and reinstating his son in the duchy of
Normandy; and their league was at once joined by the count of Anjou.
[575]

[571] Eng. Chron. a. 1115. Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 69. Eadmer,
Hist. Nov. (Rule), p. 237.

[572] “Facta est gravis dissensio inter Fulconem comitem Juniorem et

burgenses Andecavenses.” Chron. S. Serg. a. 1116 (Marchegay, Eglises, p.
143). The Chron. S. Albin. a. 1114 (ib. p. 32) has “Guerra burgensium contra
comitem”; but M. Marchegay says in a note that two MSS. read “baronum”
for “burgensium.”

[573] See details in Suger, Vita Ludov. c. 21 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p.
43), and Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 843.

[574] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 837, 838.

[575] Eng. Chron. a. 1117. Hen. Huntingdon, l. vii. c. 29 (Arnold, p. 239).

The quarrel had now assumed an aspect far more threatening to

Henry; but it was not till the middle of the following summer that the
war began in earnest. Its first honours were won by the count of Anjou,
in the capture of La Motte-Gautier, a fortress on the Cenomannian
border.[576] In September the count of Flanders was mortally wounded in
a skirmish near Eu;[577] Louis and Fulk had however more useful allies
in the Norman baronage, whose chiefs were nearly all either openly or
secretly in league with them. Almeric of Montfort, who claimed the
county of Evreux, was the life and soul of all their schemes. In October
the city of Evreux was betrayed into his hands;[578] and this disaster was
followed by another at Alençon. Henry had granted the lands of Robert
of Bellême to Theobald of Blois; Theobald, with his uncle’s permission,
made them over to his brother Stephen; and Stephen at once began to
shew in his small dominions the same incapacity for keeping order
which he shewed afterwards on a larger scale in England. His negligence
brought matters at Alençon to such a pass that the outraged citizens
called in the help of the count of Anjou, admitted him and his troops by
night into the town, and joined with him in blockading the castle.[579]
Stephen meanwhile had joined his uncle and brother at Séez. On receipt
of the evil tidings, the two young counts hurried back to Alençon, made
an unsuccessful attempt to revictual the garrison, and then tried to
surround the Angevin camp, which had been pitched in a place called
“the Park.” A long day’s fighting, in which the tide seems to have been
turned at last chiefly by the valour of Fulk himself, ended in an Angevin
victory and won him the surrender of Alençon.[580]

[576] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 844. His chronology is
all wrong.

[577] Ib. p. 843. Suger, Vita Ludov., c. 21 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p.
45). Eng. Chron. a. 1118. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 403 (Hardy, pp.
630, 631) substitutes Arques for Eu.

[578] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 843, 846.

[579] Ib. p. 847.

[580] The details of this story—in a very apocryphal-looking shape—are

in Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 145–150. The Angevin victory,
however, comes out clearly in Ord. Vit. (as above).

The following year was for Henry an almost unbroken series of

reverses and misfortunes, and in 1119 he was compelled to seek peace
with Fulk. Their treaty was ratified in June by the marriage of William
the Ætheling and Matilda of Anjou; Fulk made an attempt to end the
Cenomannian difficulty by settling Maine upon his daughter as a
marriage-portion,[581] and gave up Alençon on condition that Henry
should restore it to the dispossessed heir, William Talvas.[582] Henry had
now to face only the French king and the traitor barons. With the latter
he began at once by firing the town of Evreux.[583] Louis, on receiving
these tidings from Almeric of Montfort, assembled his troops at Etampes
and marched upon Normandy. In the plain of Brenneville, between
Noyon and Andely, he was met by Henry with the flower of his English
and Norman forces. Louis, in the insane bravado of chivalry, disdained to
get his men into order before beginning the attack, and he thereby lost
the day. The first charge, made by eighty French knights under a Norman
traitor, William Crispin, broke against the serried ranks of the English
fighting on foot around their king; all the eighty were surrounded and
made prisoners; and the rest of the French army was put to such